Meta announces additional safety measures for children and teenagers

Global social media conglomerate Meta on Monday announced additional safety features for children and teenagers joining Instagram and Facebook, the company said in a release.

One of the ways, the company said, were teenagers would now not be shown in the "people you may know" recommendations tab on both Instagram and Facebook.

“As an extra layer of protection, we’re also testing removing the message button on teens’ Instagram accounts when they’re viewed by suspicious adults altogether,” the company said, adding that it will also be prompting teenagers to report accounts to the company’s safety centre after they have blocked someone.


“In just one month in 2021, more than 100 million people saw safety notices on Messenger. We’ve also made it easier for people to find our reporting tools and, as a result, we saw more than a 70% increase in reports sent to us by minors in Q1 2022 versus the previous quarter on Messenger and Instagram DMs,” Meta said.

In July 2021, Instagram had introduced several changes for teenage safety, including making their accounts “private” as soon as they joined the platform and limiting the option for advertisers to reach these accounts.

Meta had come under fire from several organisations after reports emerged that it was aware of the negative impact of Instagram on its young users but had not done much to prevent the same.

Following these reports, Meta rolled out a series of updates for teenagers and children, including allowing parents more control over what their kids posted online.